This last week went by really fast and I spent a lot of time filling out paperwork, running errands, opening a bank account, stuff like that. Things that are annoying to do at home, and difficult to do here because of the language.
The poor guy who works at the bank trying to open a bank account for me. So patient. I experienced the French post office, a French bank, a city grocery store and a French department store, tomorrow I'm going to the doctor (I'm fine don't worry) but that will be another interesting and complicated encounter.
The kids also did some really cute and funny things, but that will be for my next blog post. What I really want to discuss was this weekend. My first French club.
It's called le showcase, and it is literally under the bridge on the siene. Jason Bourne ran over this club. We walk in and it is so loud you can't hear yourself or anyone else, disco lights are flashing so you can't see anything and the drinks are so expensive that they are undoubtedly not worth it. So we kinda all decide to just sit and people watch. Pretty soon a French guy starts chatting with us and it becomes the most disjointed conversation I've ever experienced. He wants to practice his English so he is speaking English and I am speaking awful French and half the time we don't understand each other and the other half we're correcting each others grammar.
He then asks us if we want to go smoke a cigarette and I say no thanks but it's really hot so we'll (all the girls and i) go outside. We go outside and there are seriously twice as many people outside smoking as inside this giant club. He asks why I don't want to smoke in serious confusion because EVERYONE here that is under 25 smokes. When I say everyone, I mean that when I walk the children to school in the morning we walk past the high school and I swear there are 13 year olds smoking. So explaining that I don't smoke is difficult and apparently culturally bizarre so I just tell him that I don't know why but I don't smoke. He seems more confused by this answer.
Finally we've all had enough and decide to head to WOS an English speaking bar worked by friends of the girls that I'm with. At this point it's 1ish in the morning and we have a difficult decision to make. The metros shut down for cleaning from 1:45ish to 5:30am so if you want to go home any time between then you have to take a cab which is so expensive. We decide to tough it out and plan to stay at WOS until 5:30 am so we can take the metro home. We get there and run into some of their other friends. Then it's just a normal night out except the duration is reminding me of IUDM. I'm so tired, all I wanted was to go to bed. When it was fiiiiinally time to go, we hopped on the metro and I got to my apartment at 6am, completely wiped out.
The next day I hung out with Augusta and Hugo and they invited me to a barbecue thrown by Hugo's friend Sysy. Augusta and I are extremely curious what there is going to be at a French barbecue. We get there and there is a grill full of hotdogs and chips and soda and beer just like America. We were so shocked, they even had ketchup mustard and mayonnaise. We went inside where the boys we knew were watching soccer, and I already miss American sports so badly so I decide to give soccer a shot. Aside from cute guys playing it, I wasn't super into it. Apparently 2 girls who want to watch soccer Is strange because every other girl walked in and asked why we were watching.
Hugo brings us hotdogs and I burst out laughing. In total French fashion, the hotdogs had a ripped open baguette as the bun and he had just put mayonnaise on them. It was so bizarre but we found ketchup an it ended up being fine but we just thought it was hilarious.
Let's take something super American and give it a French twist. Totally French.
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